Portland eclectic vol 3 no. 27

THE MORMONS.
A problem of singular difficulty, and every day growing more and more portentous,—than which, if we except African Slavery, none is more difficult of solution,—is rising in the distant West, before the American Government and people. Ere long they will have to grapple with it. Whether it can be peacefully solved, the future alone will tell.
A new Territory, carved out of the recent con-quests from Mexico, stretches from the summit of the Rocky Mountains on the East, through thirteen degrees of longitude, to the land of gold. A branch of the Indian family,—the Paw-tahs,—roamed its prairies and claimed it as their own. But a new tribe and sect,—driven from State to State, fleeing, before an indignant people, from Ohio, from Mis-souri and Illinois, struggling with cold and hunger, and encountering the most fearful hardships and privations, daring the ferocious savages that dwelt along their route, and dragging slowly along their children, goods and domestic implements, at length make their tedious way to the home of the Utahs ; and having, as they no doubt supposed, reached an isolated spot, so far from all organized society that they would be free from disturbance for many, many years, they set themselves down in the valley of the Jordan,—in the "land of the Honey Bee"—plant their absurd faith and begin a new nation. Some six years have since elapsed, and the census of the Great Salt Lake City probably enumerates, at this day, some forty or fifty thousand people,—while in other parts of the world, two hundred and fifty thousand more embrace the Mormon faith. In that far-off wilderness, so recently known only to the moccasin, the arts are flourishing in a high degree. Woolen factories, to be supplied by fleeces from the Jordan valley,—sugar manufactories, to be fed with beets,—potteries and cutlery establishments, send their hum through the astonished land. No such noise did it expect to hear for half a century to come. On a mountain terrace, overhanging the city, the site of a contemplated university is already laid out and enclosed. School-houses are springing up, and are supplied with competent teachers from a central Normal School. Gigantic preparations are in progress to build a Temple, which is intended to surpass every existing or historic structure in splen-dor and magnitude. The city is laid out on a scale of magnificent proportions, to which, hitherto, the world has been a stranger,—a scale corresponding with the breadth of territory on whose bosom they dwell,—corresponding with their expectations of growth, and compared with which the narrow ave-nues of modern and ancient cities, are but mere mathematical lines,—already, three miles in breadth and four in length, its streets are regularly dia-gramed, each eight rods wide, with side-walks of twenty feet,—every block forty rods square, contain-ing eight lots of an acre and a-quarter each, and every tenement obliged by law to retreat twenty feet from the front line, to make room for a delightful margin of shrubbery and trees. A perennial stream flows through the city, and pours its pure waters down both sides of every street, and carries irrigation to their bounteous gardens. A warm spring bubbles from the mountains, and following the pipes, reaches a public bathing-house. A soil of exuberant pro-ductiveness stretches around them. Comparatively little solicitation is necessary from the hand of man to bring its grains and fruits to perfection and ma-turity. Twenty miles to the northwest slumber the heavy waters of the great Salt Lake. This vast body of the purest brine,—so densely impregnated that men cannot sink in it, if they try,—fills a basin of thirty by seventy miles, and will, doubtless, be the scene of the exhaustless salt manufacture for those future generations that will inhabit the im-mense domain between the Rocky Mountains and the sea. Already a United States mail route reaches from this city to San Diego on the Pacific coast, near which the Salt Lake Mormons have, thus early, es-tablished a colony. Other and outpost settlements are planting around them, on the Weber and the Timpanagos. Mormon missionaries are proselyting the world, and converging their converts to the new City of Utah. The unconquerable mountains of Wales are sending their hardy sons to preach and practice the Mormon creed in the Western World. And here, between the Rocky Mountains and the Sierra Nevada, over eleven hundred miles from San Francisco, and about two thousand four hundred miles from the city of New York, rapidly grows this incipient community,—bound together by a burning enthusiasm and a common faith, compacted by per-secutions, welded by the necessity of self-support and self-defence,—its founder a sot, and its Bible a theft,—one of the strangest phenomena to which the present, or any age, has given birth. How far was it from the thoughts of the minister, Solomon Spalding, when, at Cherry Valley, in this State, he composed his imaginary history called the "Manu-script Found," that it would be seized by an igno-rant and truthless drunkard, proclaimed to have been engraven on golden plates, become the Scrip-ture of a new and numerous sect,—in thirty years trial 300,000 zealots in its wake,—count its worship-pers in England, Germany, Sweden, in the mountain fastnesses of Wales, in Normandy, the East Indies and the Sandwich Isles,—and found a great City and State in that territory, which, at the time he wrote, the foot of white man had never trod.
But grave questions are arising, and will hereaf-ter arise, between the Mormons and us. How shall we tolerate their too defiant bearing and the intro-duction of those items of the social creed which are in hostility to our laws, and repugnant to our senti-ments of morality and social order ? Who shall yield, they or we ? Will persuasion conquer their stubborn doctrine, and gentle words exterminate polygamy, or must that principle become engrafted upon American Institutions ? Can Federal laws reach them, and if not, is it not quite clear that the laws of the State of Utah, will be moulded by the Mormon will ? The outside population can never overtake them. There they are, in the path to our Pacific possession, perchance in the very line of the Atlantic and Pacific Railway,—soon to be brought into intimate communion with our Eastern popula-tion,—a fixture, a permanence, a perpetuity,—spreading with unexampled rapidity, drawing en-thusiasts from distant countries, and ready to up-hold every tenet of their strange faith with argu-ment and blood. To reconcile and harmonize this incongruous creed with freedom of conscience and American institutions, to prevent such a stain as polygamy from darkening our national escutcheon, and at the same time to avoid the sanguinary results of civil war, are desirable achievements, the way and mode of which are yet concealed from the wis-est speculators in future events.—N. Y. Times.

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THE MORMONS.
A problem of singular difficulty, and every day growing more and more portentous,—than which, if we except African Slavery, none is more difficult of solution,—is rising in the distant West, before the American Government and people. Ere long they will have to grapple with it. Whether it can be peacefully solved, the future alone will tell.
A new Territory, carved out of the recent con-quests from Mexico, stretches from the summit of the Rocky Mountains on the East, through thirteen degrees of longitude, to the land of gold. A branch of the Indian family,—the Paw-tahs,—roamed its prairies and claimed it as their own. But a new tribe and sect,—driven from State to State, fleeing, before an indignant people, from Ohio, from Mis-souri and Illinois, struggling with cold and hunger, and encountering the most fearful hardships and privations, daring the ferocious savages that dwelt along their route, and dragging slowly along their children, goods and domestic implements, at length make their tedious way to the home of the Utahs ; and having, as they no doubt supposed, reached an isolated spot, so far from all organized society that they would be free from disturbance for many, many years, they set themselves down in the valley of the Jordan,—in the "land of the Honey Bee"—plant their absurd faith and begin a new nation. Some six years have since elapsed, and the census of the Great Salt Lake City probably enumerates, at this day, some forty or fifty thousand people,—while in other parts of the world, two hundred and fifty thousand more embrace the Mormon faith. In that far-off wilderness, so recently known only to the moccasin, the arts are flourishing in a high degree. Woolen factories, to be supplied by fleeces from the Jordan valley,—sugar manufactories, to be fed with beets,—potteries and cutlery establishments, send their hum through the astonished land. No such noise did it expect to hear for half a century to come. On a mountain terrace, overhanging the city, the site of a contemplated university is already laid out and enclosed. School-houses are springing up, and are supplied with competent teachers from a central Normal School. Gigantic preparations are in progress to build a Temple, which is intended to surpass every existing or historic structure in splen-dor and magnitude. The city is laid out on a scale of magnificent proportions, to which, hitherto, the world has been a stranger,—a scale corresponding with the breadth of territory on whose bosom they dwell,—corresponding with their expectations of growth, and compared with which the narrow ave-nues of modern and ancient cities, are but mere mathematical lines,—already, three miles in breadth and four in length, its streets are regularly dia-gramed, each eight rods wide, with side-walks of twenty feet,—every block forty rods square, contain-ing eight lots of an acre and a-quarter each, and every tenement obliged by law to retreat twenty feet from the front line, to make room for a delightful margin of shrubbery and trees. A perennial stream flows through the city, and pours its pure waters down both sides of every street, and carries irrigation to their bounteous gardens. A warm spring bubbles from the mountains, and following the pipes, reaches a public bathing-house. A soil of exuberant pro-ductiveness stretches around them. Comparatively little solicitation is necessary from the hand of man to bring its grains and fruits to perfection and ma-turity. Twenty miles to the northwest slumber the heavy waters of the great Salt Lake. This vast body of the purest brine,—so densely impregnated that men cannot sink in it, if they try,—fills a basin of thirty by seventy miles, and will, doubtless, be the scene of the exhaustless salt manufacture for those future generations that will inhabit the im-mense domain between the Rocky Mountains and the sea. Already a United States mail route reaches from this city to San Diego on the Pacific coast, near which the Salt Lake Mormons have, thus early, es-tablished a colony. Other and outpost settlements are planting around them, on the Weber and the Timpanagos. Mormon missionaries are proselyting the world, and converging their converts to the new City of Utah. The unconquerable mountains of Wales are sending their hardy sons to preach and practice the Mormon creed in the Western World. And here, between the Rocky Mountains and the Sierra Nevada, over eleven hundred miles from San Francisco, and about two thousand four hundred miles from the city of New York, rapidly grows this incipient community,—bound together by a burning enthusiasm and a common faith, compacted by per-secutions, welded by the necessity of self-support and self-defence,—its founder a sot, and its Bible a theft,—one of the strangest phenomena to which the present, or any age, has given birth. How far was it from the thoughts of the minister, Solomon Spalding, when, at Cherry Valley, in this State, he composed his imaginary history called the "Manu-script Found," that it would be seized by an igno-rant and truthless drunkard, proclaimed to have been engraven on golden plates, become the Scrip-ture of a new and numerous sect,—in thirty years trial 300,000 zealots in its wake,—count its worship-pers in England, Germany, Sweden, in the mountain fastnesses of Wales, in Normandy, the East Indies and the Sandwich Isles,—and found a great City and State in that territory, which, at the time he wrote, the foot of white man had never trod.
But grave questions are arising, and will hereaf-ter arise, between the Mormons and us. How shall we tolerate their too defiant bearing and the intro-duction of those items of the social creed which are in hostility to our laws, and repugnant to our senti-ments of morality and social order ? Who shall yield, they or we ? Will persuasion conquer their stubborn doctrine, and gentle words exterminate polygamy, or must that principle become engrafted upon American Institutions ? Can Federal laws reach them, and if not, is it not quite clear that the laws of the State of Utah, will be moulded by the Mormon will ? The outside population can never overtake them. There they are, in the path to our Pacific possession, perchance in the very line of the Atlantic and Pacific Railway,—soon to be brought into intimate communion with our Eastern popula-tion,—a fixture, a permanence, a perpetuity,—spreading with unexampled rapidity, drawing en-thusiasts from distant countries, and ready to up-hold every tenet of their strange faith with argu-ment and blood. To reconcile and harmonize this incongruous creed with freedom of conscience and American institutions, to prevent such a stain as polygamy from darkening our national escutcheon, and at the same time to avoid the sanguinary results of civil war, are desirable achievements, the way and mode of which are yet concealed from the wis-est speculators in future events.—N. Y. Times.